


Peter Benjamin Parker

by two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: 'gay representation' my ASS, Bisexual Michelle Jones, Bisexual Peter Parker, Coming Out, FUCK endgame, Gen, May is accepting, Misgendering, Ned and Peter are Bros ™, Ned is a good friend, THAT WAS NOT LGBT REP, Tony Stark and Aunt May are basically Coparenting Peter, Trans Peter Parker, Transphobia, also this fic has nothing to do with endgame but, bitch, flash thompson is a dick, there i said it, this has not been edited at all i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 12:30:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18992695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat/pseuds/two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat
Summary: He chose the name Peter because it was the name he’d always wanted. He took Benjamin as his middle name after his Uncle, who’d always supported him.-A fic about Peter Parker realizing he's trans, coming out to different people, dealing with bullying at school, and becoming Spider-Man. TW for bullying, some transphobic slurs, and misgendering.





	Peter Benjamin Parker

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys, so basically I've been kicking this story idea around for a while, I had a lot of drafts of it saved in various places, so I pieced them together and I made a whole fic. It was supposed to be short but then it ended up being like twelve pages long in google docs so yeah oof I guess. I'm supposed to be studying for a Latin exam right now but I said fuck it if you know what the third declension i-stem endings are tell me 'cause I sure don't. 
> 
> I haven't edited this but I might go back and edit it later when I actually have time.

He chose the name Peter because it was the name he’d always wanted. He took Benjamin as his middle name after his Uncle, who’d always supported him. Parker was a given. It was his last name. There was no need to change it. Parker was fine. 

“Peter Parker,” he would say to himself when he was alone. When May was working late shifts and it was just him alone in their small apartment. He would look at himself in the bathroom mirror, four sports bras layered over his chest to make it flat, wearing his most masculine clothing, and he would say his name. 

“I am Peter Parker,” he would say to himself. “Peter Benjamin Parker.”

Overall, he supposed that he just really liked the way it sounded. 

Then his phone would ping with a text from May, saying something like ‘I’m on my way home! See you soon!’ and he would pull all the sports bras off and shove them in his closet and run back to his room, change into his pajamas and pretend to be doing homework. He was able to hear May walk up to the door apartment, hear the click of the key in the lock. He had it down to a science, by now. He knew just the right amount of time to take so that he would be perfectly in the rhythm of studying by the time May opened that door. He didn’t do it that often. But just often enough. Every other day, on the days May worked late, he took the time to make his chest flat and look in the mirror and say his name when he was home alone. 

It was one of the things that kept him sane. 

-

Peter realized he was trans in middle school, at around ten years old. He already knew he was bi - that part had come to him easily. Boys were pretty. Girls were pretty. He liked the idea of kissing both. But he didn’t figure out he was trans until he started going through puberty. 

May and Ben had never really pushed gender roles on him. They didn’t care about Barbie dolls versus race cars. They didn’t care if the Barbie doll was driving the race car. To May, all the toys were the same. When she bought toys for Peter, it really only came down to which was on sale. Ben didn’t care that Peter looked up to Iron Man more than Black Widow. He didn’t care that he preferred to wear pants rather than dresses. Neither of them never really restricted Peter based on his gender. 

“I don’t like pink that much,” he would say. 

“Okay,” Aunt May would reply. “We’ll stop by Goodwill and get you something else. What colors do you want to wear?”

Or maybe Peter would say something like, “I don’t like playing with the girls. I would rather play with the boys.”

And Uncle Ben would say, “That’s okay kiddo, as long as you play nice, you can play with whoever you want.”

Some of the other moms thought it was weird, or distasteful. All of their daughters dressed up as princesses for Halloween, but May and Ben Parker’s niece wanted to be Captain America. 

“Why would you let your niece wear that atrocity?” Asked one of the moms at Peter’s preschool, as she looked at the homemade Captain America shield Peter was brandishing.

May shrugged. “She wanted to be Captain America, and I wanted a happy kid.”

Peter was a happy kid. His aunt and uncle didn’t care about gender roles, and hey, at this point in his life he was still being called by what would soon become his deadname, and she/her pronouns, and it wasn’t ideal. But he didn’t think about it much. He was just who he was. He kept this mentality all the way through fifth grade. 

And then he got to middle school, and things got weird. 

Some stuff was good. He got to reinvent himself in middle school. He met his best friend Ned, and Ned was awesome. Ned like sci-fi and old movies and school, just the way Peter did, and they both loved the Avengers. Peter may have been more of a Trekkie than a Star Wars fan, and Ned may have been more of a Star Wars fan than a Trekkie, but they didn’t let that come between them. Nerds stick together. 

But some things were worse in middle school, too. Suddenly, it was really not okay for a girl to hang out with boys. Peter, still going by his deadname and she/her pronouns at the time, was immediately an outcast from the rest of the girls at his school. And Ned, for hanging out with Peter, was immediately an outcast from all the boys. And everywhere they went, Peter was called Ned’s girlfriend, and Ned was called Peter’s boyfriend, and the names were full of hatred and taunting from their peers. Everyone was meaner in middle school. They were meaner and nastier and they smelled like sweat and insecurities. 

Peter started to go through puberty in early sixth grade, and something about it was wrong. He hated not having a flat chest, and he hated that he was starting to get curvier, and he hated that Ned was getting voice cracks but he wasn’t. It didn’t feel fair. And Peter was also sort of… well, confused. Because the thing was, Peter was pretty sure most girls were happy with the ways their bodies were changing. Most girls didn’t want to cut their boobs off their bodies. Most girls didn’t envy their boy best friends for their awkwardly deepening voices.

Peter went home one day and he got a copy of National Geographic in the mail. He always got National Geographic in the mail, once a month, every month. May had gotten him a subscription for his birthday last year. The cover of this month’s issue read ‘Gender Revolution’ and on the cover was a little kid with pink hair. Peter grabbed the Nat Geo and brought it with him to his room. He read the thing cover to cover. He learned a new word. 

Transgender. 

His entire life, he’d just thought he was a weird girl. But now he had a word. A word for people who were born a different gender than they actually were. There were men in the world who’d started out as women, and women who’d started out as men, and people of both genders who fell somewhere in between. ‘Gender is a spectrum,’ National Geographic told him. One of the lines that stuck with him the most was that of a young MTF kid, who had transitioned to be a girl. 

“The best part of being a girl is now, I don’t have to pretend to be a boy anymore.”

Peter thought about that line a lot. 

For him, it was more like this. 

“If I told May that I’m a boy, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be a girl, anymore.”

He figured out he was trans when he was ten years old. It was a lot to take in, but at least he finally understood himself. 

-

Peter and Ned lived through the hell that was middle school. They got excited for high school. (Read: Ned. Ned got excited for high school.)

“Think of it this way,” Ned would say. “It sucks right now, but middle school sucks for everyone. You know what won’t suck? High school.”

“But what if we end up placed in different districts?”

“Not gonna happen,” Ned said. “Not on my watch.”

Ned convinced Peter to take the entry test for Midtown Tech with him, and they both got in. May was so happy for Peter, and Peter was so excited. 

“Look at my young scientist,” May beamed after they got the news via an email from Peter’s middle school. “You’re growing up.”

She splurged and got Peter a laptop for his birthday that year. It was in part congratulations for getting in to such a good school, and it was also good for him to have for schoolwork. It wasn’t the nicest thing ever, but it was better than his other tech, which was all scavenged from dumpsters. 

One of the best things about getting his laptop was that now, he could google whatever he wanted without May noticing. He could look up how to bind and how to get his voice to drop and, most importantly, how to safely come out to family members. He read blogs by other trans boys and trans men. He chose a new name for himself. 

Peter Benjamin Parker. 

It was the perfect name. 

-

He told May he was trans when he was thirteen, right after he passed the tests that would get him into Midtown Tech. It was at night, after one of her late shifts, and he sat her down on the couch to do it. 

“There’s something you need to know,” he said, and his voice was shaking. “I’m not a girl. I’m a boy. My name is Peter Benjamin Parker.”

She’d started crying, and he was scared that he’d done something wrong. But she was also smiling, and she hugged him, and she said, “I have a nephew.” and she took him out to dinner at the nice Thai place they liked, and they started talking about what they needed to do. May didn’t know very much about transgender stuff, but she knew that she wanted her nephew to be happy, so she let Peter fill her in on what exactly having a transgender nephew meant. 

“Peter,” she said, still getting used to the name. “That’s a good choice, Peter.”

“Like Peter Rabbit,” he said, “and Peter Pan.”

“And Benjamin?” Asked May. “After your Uncle?”

“Yes,” said Peter. 

Uncle Ben had died a while ago, but neither of them was really over his death yet.

“Peter Benjamin Parker,” May said again. “It sounds nice.”

“Thanks.”

“So. Do you want to get your hair cut?”

\- 

Peter came out to Ned when he was fourteen, one year after he came out to May. He was scared that things would go wrong, but that never happened. Ned took it extremely well. Though Peter couldn’t remember Ned’s exact response, it was something along the lines of “Woohoo! Another dude in the world, dude!” and then they’d done their handshake. Ned took it so well, Peter decided to come out to the school a month later. He went to Midtown Tech now. He figured it was a good time to reinvent himself. 

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” Asked Aunt May when Peter told her his plan.

“It’s a pretty chill school,” he told May. “I can be myself there.”

That was when things went bad. 

Some people took it well. Michelle, Liz, most of the kids on their AcDec team. They immediately addressed him as Peter, and though they slipped up sometimes, they soon fell into the rhythm of he/him/his and Peter Benjamin Parker. 

Some people took it horribly, calling Peter slurs in the halls, purposefully misgendering him, deadnaming him, trying to make him an outcast in every possible way. Flash and his goons were the worst. They called him ‘Penis’ Parker when they felt inspired, and tranny when they weren’t. 

Most people fell somewhere in between. They didn’t really care about what was happening with Peter, for better or worse. If they did care, they kept their mouths shut, because it was none of their business. If it hadn’t been for Flash, Peter would probably be living a relatively unbullied life. But that’s just not how things worked out. 

Flash got especially mad after May asked the school for permission to let Peter change in the boy’s locker rooms for gym class. The school had little to no problems with it (peter was a good student with a clean record and Midtown was progressive enough) but the other boys didn’t like it much. Peter got his ass kicked by Flash and his cronies two days into using the boy’s locker rooms, and Ned, who was out of town at the time, wasn’t there to help him. Peter had bruises for months. 

\- 

MJ may have called him a loser, but at least she called him by his preferred name and pronouns. Of course, Peter knew that some part of MJ would have been hypocritical had she not been nice about peter being trans - MJ was in the school GSA, and she was very, very bi. It was one of the clubs she shared with Peter, but unlike Peter, who only went once or twice a month, MJ attended the meetings almost daily. Though MJ wasn’t harassed about her sexuality the way Peter was about his gender, at least Peter had a supportive family. May completely encouraged him, buying him a binder, putting aside money for his transition, asking teachers to use his preferred name instead of his deadname. Michelle, on the other hand, had to keep her identity a secret, or else be at risk of being thrown out of her home. It was weird - Michelle was such a crazy social justice warrior that Peter often found himself forgetting how completely homophobic her parents were. They were the ‘pray the gay away’ type. ‘Homosexuality’s a sin’ and all that. Peter was so happy to have May. Someone who would teach him how to tie a tie and help him bind and find exercises that would lower his voice. Peter had May. MJ had no one. 

Well, maybe she had Peter. They were both bi, and they both had a celebrity crush on Princess Shuri of Wakanda, and they both were on AcDec. 

\- 

Somewhere in between everything, Peter was bit by a spider. 

It happened at the end of his freshman year, when he was on a field trip with the rest of Midtown’s freshmen. They went to this cool museum of science and tech. There was an exhibit of spiders, for some reason. Radioactive spiders. Peter and Ned and MJ were in separate groups, so Peter was all alone with Flash Thompson and the rest of his crew. Peter tried to entertain himself by looking at the spiders, reading the information about them, listening to the tour guide drone on and on about the experiments being performed on the arachnids in the museum’s labs. 

“Hey Penis,” Flash had said. “This one looks like you.”

Flash pointed to a spider that had gotten outside of the exhibit, and another one of the boys picked it up and stuck it down Peter’s shirt, and it all happened so fast, in a blur, and then the damn thing bit him, and he couldn’t do anything. He managed to kill it, but that didn’t stop the spider bite from hurting like hell, and it didn’t stop Flash from making fun of him for the rest of the trip.

\- 

Time passed, and Peter Parker realized that his spider bite was more than just a spider bite. His body was changing again, more than it should have been. He got abs overnight. He could stick to walls. He started to get a weird feeling all over his body whenever something big was about to happen. So, he did what any sensible teen should do when they develop inhuman powers. He decided to become a vigilante superhero. He’d always wanted to be one. 

He designed a red-and-blue costume for himself out of scrap fabric, and he called himself Spider-Man. Soon enough he made it on YouTube, and shortly afterward the people of Queens knew and respected him as their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He didn’t tell anyone about it. He didn’t need May worrying over him, or Ned freaking out and getting so excited he spilled to the entire school. Peter was happy to keep this a secret. 

He was good at keeping secrets. 

-

Then one day, Tony Fucking Stark showed up at his doorstep. In his living room. He came home from school one day and he was ready to do his homework and TONY FUCKING STARK WAS SITTING THERE IN HIS LIVING ROOM WITH HIS AUNT MAY DRINKING COFFEE.

TONY. FUCKING. STARK. 

Peter may or may not have been low-key freaking out. 

And then Tony Fucking Stark and Peter went into Peter Parker’s bedroom, and then Tony Fucking Stark asked Peter if he was Spider-Man, and Peter didn’t know what to say. What do you say to someone like Tony Stark? Peter went through his options. 

Hey, I’m Peter Benjamin Parker. You’re Tony Stark, holy shit. 

Hey, I’m Peter Benjamin Parker. I bet my friend Ned twenty dollars that if either of us ever met you in our lifetimes, it would be him. Apparently I was wrong.

Hey, I’m Peter Benjamin Parker. I had a crush on you in fifth grade. 

Hey, I’m Peter Benjamin Parker. I think you’re the coolest person in the world and I want to be a superhero like you when I grow up. 

Hey, I’m Peter Benjamin Parker. I really hope you didn’t look into my birth records because goddammit I still haven’t gotten a fucking legal name change yet and if you go into this thinking I’m a girl I’ll have to go through the coming out thing with Tony Stark and I’m really not ready for that right now. 

None of those were things he could say. He was freaking out. Tony Stark, Tony Fucking Stark, was in his bedroom, commenting on his old computers and his meager decorations. Goddammit, he would’ve cleaned up the place if he’d known Tony Stark was coming. 

“Do you know who this is?” Asked Stark, showing Peter a video of Spider-Man saving someone’s life. 

“No,” Peter said. 

Stark went on to make a comment about how much weight Peter must have been lifting, and then Stark found Peter’s Spider-Man suit, and Peter thought his life was ending. But somehow, it got worse. 

“What’s a girl like you doing running around at night, saving lives, and calling yourself Spider-Man?”

Peter was taken aback. The first reason was that Tony Stark, Tony Fucking Stark, had called him a girl, which (other than the purposeful misgendering he experienced from kids at school) hadn’t happened to him in a long while. But then he thought about how Stark had probably found him out through lots of extensive internet searches, and then he remembered how he still hadn’t gotten a legal name change, and he cursed himself, he cursed himself so much. It was anywhere between $65 and $210 to get a legal name change in New York, and that was money they just didn’t have on hand between the money they were also setting aside for rent, groceries, water, power, and Peter’s transition fund. So if Tony Stark knew about Peter through google, google would’ve told Stark he was a girl. 

Goddammit. 

“Fine.” Peter said. “Yes, it’s me. But you can’t tell May. She’d freak out.”

Peter and Stark conversed some more, and Stark told Peter that they were going to Germany to fight the Avengers, which was a lot of information really fast and it was a lot for Peter to take in, but he went with it. 

“Great,” Stark said. “Just, one final question, Ms. Parker.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s a fifteen-year-old girl doing calling herself Spider-Man?”

Peter was quiet for a second. “I, um, I didn’t want people to suspect me,” he said. “You know, if Spider-Man’s, well, a man, and I’m, uh,” he paused. “If I’m a girl, then no one would be able to figure out I’m also Spider-Man.”

“That’s smart,” Stark said, completely buying it. “You’re a smart kid.”

-  
“What did he want?” Asked May, after Stark left. 

“He… was talking to me about this thing called the Stark Internship.”

 

“That’s awesome Peter.”

“He wants me to go to Germany with him. He says he’ll pay for it.”

May smiled. “That’s great.”

“But…”

“What?”

“He thinks I’m a girl.”

“Oh Peter,” she said, smile starting to deteriorate. “I’m sorry.”

-

“Great job today, kid,” Tony Stark said. They had just finished fighting Cap and his pals in Germany. It was great. Peter had had a lot of fun, and Mr. Stark had been raving about his powers. “You know, some people thought I was crazy for asking for help from a teenage girl, but obviously they’ve never met this teenage girl, am I right?”

Peter felt himself stiffen up. “Boy, actually.”

“What?”

Peter cursed himself. Why had he said that? Everything was perfect. Mr. Stark was being nice to him for once, without the annoying banter and sarcasm he usually used, he was being genuinely kind, and Peter had to come and fuck it up by correcting him. Mr. Stark didn’t need to know Peter was trans. They’d been working together for roughly a week now and Peter had never told him that Peter was actually a boy. And now, in Germany of all places, he decides he’s going to just come out? They didn’t even know each other that well yet. And he was overseas. What if Mr. Stark ditched him? What if he was secretly transphobic? He didn’t seem like the type to be like that, but people could surprise you...

 

“...teenage boy,” Peter said, because he figured he’d already started the process. He may as well finish it. “I’m a boy. Spider-Man.”

Tony looked confused, like he didn’t get what was going on, and then he looked upset, and for a moment, Peter was worried. Worried he’d screwed everything up. What if Mr. Stark never wanted to see him again? What if this was the end of the Stark Internship?

But then Peter realized he was being picked up into a great big bear hug, and Tony was talking again. 

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Why would you let me misgender you?”

Peter was crying, now. “I was scared.”

“So you’re a boy?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. That’s fine, kid.”

“And my name is Peter Parker,” Peter said. “Peter Benjamin Parker.”

“Peter Parker,” Mr. Stark smiled. “That’s a good superhero alter-ego name. It’s like you planned for this.”

-

Mr. Stark made him a binder, which Peter found funny. He was grateful for it, don’t get him wrong. It was a very nice binder, better than the low-quality ones he and May could just barely afford, and it worked better, too. And Peter was so, so grateful for it. It’s just that he was also amused, because Tony Stark was an Avenger, a tech genius, someone who should have been putting energy towards developing AI or time travel, yet here he was, making binders for AFAB people. All because Peter came out to him as trans. It was wild. If you’d told Peter two years ago that soon enough Tony Stark would be mass-producing chest binders in his name, Peter would have seen you as insane. But here they were. Stark even put a binder inside of the Spider-Man suit, so that Peter wouldn’t have to deal with dysphoria in the middle of battle. 

“Just tell me if it gets too tight,” Mr. Stark would say. “And remember to do your stretches, and stay safe, I don’t want you passing out while you’re fighting.”

\- 

The public was really surprised when Tony Stark, the fucking Iron Man, of all people, took an interest in trans rights. Of course, the press tried to spin it into something that it wasn’t. ‘Is Tony Stark trans?’ was a really common google search for some time. But the headlines got nowhere, so it soon became sort of a feel-good story. One of those TEN REASONS I STILL HAVE FAITH IN HUMANITY Buzzfeed articles. No one ever suspected Peter Parker, no one ever suspected Peter Parker, which was good for Peter Parker. And what was even better was that as long as he was Spider-Man, everyone thought of him as a guy. 

Stark released some state-of-the-art binders and packers and stuff for trans youth. He got his line of it being sold in Target stores and Walmarts across the country, and he kept the prices ow enough that anyone working minimum wage could buy one. Tony Stark didn’t need to make a profit, and he didn’t want one. He wanted trans kids to be healthy and happy. He wanted Peter Parker to be healthy and happy. 

Pepper wouldn’t stop teasing him about it, of course. 

-

“I can’t believe it,” Ned said. “You get the Stark Internship and suddenly Tony Stark’s designing binders for you?! Peter, this is awesome!”

“Tony Stark’s making binders because of you?” Michelle said. “I didn’t even know he was an ally!”

“Neither did I,” said Peter. 

-

Mr. Stark was like Peter’s father. May wasn’t really sure how she felt about it, but she knew that she wanted her nephew to be happy, so she let it be. Peter loved the Stark Internship more than anything else in the world (although the Academic Decathlon team was a close second) and so she encouraged him to continue to do it. For his next birthday, Mr. Stark sent Peter a new bed and other things for his room (with May’s permission, of course) and he put money toward Peter’s top surgery fund, and helped him out when it came to a legal name change. 

“I don’t know if I should accept all this money,” Peter said. He and May were discussing Mr. Stark’s offer over dinner one night, right after he said he could officially change Peter’s name to Peter Benjamin Parker. 

“Listen Peter,” said May. “You know I’m not a fan of this Tony Stark. But he’s a multimillionaire, and a legal name change is something you’ve wanted for a long, long time, and we can’t afford it. But to him a couple hundred dollars is nothing. And all we have to do is fill out some paperwork, and he says we wouldn’t even have to do that much, because he ‘has pull’ over someone on the city government or something.”

“He’s just given us so much…”

“Peter. He is going to change your name so that you’re officially Peter Benjamin Parker. He designed a binder for you. It’s… it’s like I’m co-parenting with him right now, okay? So let’s pretend he’s your uncle. If a family member were to offer to do this for you, would you accept their money?”

“Yes.”

“Than let him do this for you.”

-

Peter Benjamin Parker. 

That was officially his name, now. 

Peter Benjamin Parker.

**Author's Note:**

> I sure hope you like it also please wish me luck on my exams g'night folks.


End file.
